Who's On 4th? / Berkeley's trendy shopping area is a scene that evokes old-fashioned "Main Street"

John King, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Monday, March 1, 1999

1999-03-01 04:00:00 PDT BERKELEY -- Every weekend, people from around the bay converge on Fourth Street in Berkeley. Some arrive in search of hot fashions and cool housewares; others buy a cup of coffee as an excuse to drink in the scene.

Whatever the lure, something else is on display -- perhaps the most distinctive urban district created in the Bay Area in the past 20 years.

Unlike indoor malls, and such outdoor bazaars as Corte Madera Plaza or Palo Alto's Stanford Shopping Center, Fourth Street is for real. The wide benches along the sidewalk are open to anyone who wants to sit down. Trains rumble along in plain sight behind a small flower stall.

At its best, Fourth Street evokes a feeling reminiscent of another era's Main Street, a place with nooks and crannies where people would run errands and see friends as well as simply consume.

Now, as the district's biggest development proposal yet begins to take shape, it's important to realize the underlying reason for Fourth Street's success. What's unique isn't this shop or that restaurant. The district has come together the way that cities once took shape: intricately, piece by piece by piece.

"What's always come first is building a healthy environment," says Denny Abrams. "There's nothing wrong with making money if you create something good along the way."

As much as anyone, Abrams and his partner, Richard Millikan, are the creators of Fourth Street as it exists today. Since 1978 they have built or renovated eight buildings -- including a new mustard-yellow set of stores that wraps around the corner of Fourth and Hearst streets.

For now, this building marks the entryway to the district. But that will change: The Spenger family wants to cover the empty block across from its former seafood restaurant with several retail buildings and a parking garage. Meanwhile, the Portland-based McCormick and Schmick chain reportedly may take over the historic Spenger's structure, which in its glory days was one of America's most popular restaurants.

City officials say they want any new development to fit in with what exists.

FINDING PLANS THAT MATCH

"Fourth Street has grown in little pieces, and that's important," says Ted Burton, who oversees the area for Berkeley's economic development department. "Our concern is that anything new be compatible, with wider sidewalks and smaller storefronts."

Finding that match won't be easy.

The district stretches barely half a mile, running north from Hearst to Virginia streets. The first block is the most seductive: broad sidewalks are framed by two-story buildings, most in creamy light stucco, and broad sycamore trees. No matter how jammed the parking lots nearby might be, this area never seems crowded -- "it encourages people to wander around and jaywalk," Burton says.

Further north the buildings close in -- not so much because of developer greed but because the shops fill structures originally built for industry. Trendy retailers such as Restoration Hardware have outposts here; so does Cody's Books, which opened here in 1997 to lure customers tired of the wilder street scene around the original shop on Telegraph Avenue.

Like Cody's, Abrams has roots in the old Berkeley as well as Fourth Street's newer, chic setting. His Berkeley ties go back to the '60s; he was active in the Free Speech Movement and later helped design People's Park. He also spent four years working for Christopher Alexander, an influential architect who preaches the virtue of small-scale change that rises from the culture of a community.

By the late '70s, Abrams and Millikan were building custom homes. When Berkeley's redevelopment agency wanted to sell several acres along Fourth Street, they stepped forward.

"We wanted to create a modern version of a crafts guild," says Abrams, who in conversation veers from the thoughtful to the happily provocative, as when he proclaims that "(retail) people are stupid if they don't come when I call."

By 1982, a cluster of buildings filling one block on the west side of Fourth Street included a mix of artisans as well as the then-white-hot Fourth Street Grill, which drew national attention. Then "I went to Soho and saw the concept of high-end retail in bombed-out buildings," Abrams says, adding pugnaciously, "Had I presented this vision to the city at the start, they would have laughed me out of the room."

Viewed strictly as architecture, the buildings are of varying quality. What counts is how they all fit together, forming a place where the different colors and textures add to the scene -- as do the flyers stapled to telephone poles, or the metal shedlike buildings filled with design firms tucked behind a futon shop.

There's a real-life jumble. And stores aren't everywhere you look.

Another crucial factor is the effort made by Abrams and Millikan to blur, as much as possible, the line between public and private space. You see this in the firm's biggest project, a renovated building that sits four feet above the street. At the corner, where it turns from the street to a long plaza, the tenant is Peet's Coffee.

Peet's storefront is handsome enough, but what catches the eye is the outdoor seating, ideal for both preening and people-watching. It is framed by a thick, low concrete wall, just right for perching, then a wide ramp up to the plaza and another concrete wall.

The result? On a sunny day -- and the building is angled to draw as much sun as possible -- people mill about in all directions. Abrams takes pride in the low-key way that Peet's lords over the scene.

"The best location on Fourth Street, and what do you have? A cup of coffee for a dollar," he boasts. "A mall, all the food is shoved off into a court on the third floor."

Far less compelling is the newest retail building on the street, built by Abrams and Millikan just in time for last year's holiday shopping season.

The mustard-colored structure with crisp gray awnings covers a lot that in Fourth Street's funkier days contained an organic garden. If it blazed with light -- from a Telegraph Avenue-style coffee house, say -- the one-story building might assert itself. Instead, it features a nice shoe store, a nice housewares store, a nice pet store.

The operative word: nice. Not distinctive, or provocative, but nice.

"I like the building, but it could have more presence," admits Millikan, the less public of the pair. "It's a little disappointing."

No formal proposal has gone to the city for the Spenger's lot. Abrams' hope is that the owners take it slow, think long-term.

"If you build in large lumps of space, you've got to scramble for tenants or you'll go broke," he argues. "What exists now, it's all been incremental. Every building is a response to the last one."

PROJECT DONE PIECE BY PIECE

Burton, the Berkeley official, agrees that Fourth Street is greater than the sum of its parts.

"By having a place broken down into little pieces, each project has received lots of attention," Burton says. "It's very tough to do a large project and get that same organic feeling that comes from different shapes and looks and budgets."

In the end, the Fourth Street retail district is just that: a place to shop. But the stores wouldn't be there if a genuine place had not come first -- and that progression is all too rare in modern America.

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